Of Gold and Dust Dark Camelot, Oneshot
by PureLightHealer
Summary: A glance at the Camelot the Legends never spoke of...


**Hello Everyone! **

**Alright, so this is my first shot at any form of story-like creative writing. *cue butterflies in stomach* :)**

**I hope it's alright and if someone (anyone? XD) could review and let me know what they think... Well, It would make my day!**

** Thanks in advance and ****Enjoy!**

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><p><strong>Of Gold and Dust<strong>

''_In their love and in their lust,_

_They became nothing more but_

_Fallen angels, wings crumbled into dust.''_

_A __land __of __myth __and __a __time __of __magic__ …_ That was the starry-eyed declaration most writers used to describe the olden days of Camelot. The Kingdom had fascinated many upon its subsequent rediscovery. Priceless relics had been dug up and examined closely for any hints of the bygone era. Hundreds of texts had been dusted off and translated with only too much enthusiasm. Pick any one of them up and they'll tell you tales of legend and lore, of lust (you'd be a fool to mistake it for anything else) and power. It would seem the Kingdom had it all. And you would be inclined to agree if only you could ignore the fact that the lore never led to wisdom, the power never to justice and the lust never to devotion. And certainly not Love. No, there was no place for _love_ in Camelot.

Not in the famed time of _Camelot,_when the King still mourned the loss of his half-sister, his lover, his _enemy_. When the Queen, exalted for her _morality_, stole into the night and slipped into the bed of her husband's most _trusted _soldier. Where virtue and vice became so inexorably linked that you could no longer tell the one from the other.

And what of Arthur's half-sister? The one who fell astray? Who fell from grace in Camelot but climbed the ranks of powerful _magic_ which only grew stronger within her? She had laid siege to her own Kingdom and to his throne, _demanded_ it as her birthright, as the illegitimate daughter the old King would never acknowledge. A bloody battle ensued and finally it was Merlin who drove her out. As she knew he would. Who else but her kin? His magic was always the more powerful, forged on the lives of the many he had annihilated before her. She became a _wanderer_, and Arthur's obsession. Any sighting of her, any rumour and he would send out his knights in search of her. Ordered relentless waves to hunt her. Patrols, scouts. It didn't matter to him. Even away from him, even as a ghost, she drove him to near _madness_. He didn't even know what he would do once she stood before him. A prisoner, but she would never bow. He knew her well enough. Better than anyone, or so he thought. No, she would rather drown in her _own __blood _than bow to him on the very throne that had become their _battleground_. But it didn't matter and so he simply ordered Merlin to send out more men. And more when those failed to return.

But Merlin knew exactly where she was. _Always _knew. It was easy work, to lead the soldiers out, following false-trails and dead ends. She was his own. It had always been foretold he would be her doom. If she would be taken down it would be at his hands. Yet like Arthur, he couldn't destroy her either. Dared not. No, if he was cursed to live on in this _God-forsaken_ place, then so would she. He made sure of it. It had once been said that he would be the light to her darkness. That prophecy mocked him now, when all was darkness; no light in him, none in her.

No, he'd be _damned_ before he led them to her. He told himself she didn't belong in Camelot anyway. Not in Camelot, where sinners danced with saints and in a court where a _smile_was deadlier than a scowl. But their own dance was just as deadly. The bloody game they played, hell-bent on vengeance. They were kin, the same cursed magic flowing through their veins. The same _twisted _pull that drew them, or rather _forced_ them together despite the vows of hatred they had taken against each other. He remembers the first time he forced through that barrier. Her barrier. Remembers running his fingers through hair that was dark as _sin_ (his sin or hers?) and that fell on white shoulders that seemed to carry a world of pain. They say a perpetrator always returns to the site of his crime. And so he returned to her, night after night, year after year until all that remained of them were imprints on a broken bed and ghostly whispers in a long-forgotten tower.

And what of Merlin's work? The one whose destiny it had been foretold, was to unite the worlds of Human and Magical being? And unite them he did, binding them both in a _chokehold_ so tight that it was bent only to his will. And so he too was exalted, remembered as the savior of Camelot, or maybe it was the _curse_ of Camelot…It did not matter because he had brought upon the acclaimed 'Era of Peace'. But that label of 'peace' had been added later, when few were still alive to remember the _dreadful _silence that filled the city almost as thickly as the stench of the dead, piled high on every field and in every alley. This was the silence that was labeled as _peace_. Because when the wars reaped every household dry, no one remained alive to fight or to be fighting. Nothing but the sound of empty cradles rocking to the wind… And this _deafening __silence_, masquerading as Peace.

And this was the Golden Age of Camelot. _Gold_, like the kind that could be seen on a King's tomb, pompous and elaborate and yet filled with nothing, but decayed remains and bleached _bones_, finely ground into _dust_…


End file.
